A galaxy consisting of a few hundred billion stars is a mote of dust in the vastness of the universe. Our galaxy (the Milky Way) is about 100 000 light years across, the clo…sest neighbor (Andromeda - she is very close in universal comparison to distant galaxies) is about 2 000 000 light years away. That means if you see light from Andromeda (which you can if you look in the right place on a very dark night) the light left Andromeda two million years ago (when there were not even any human beings on Earth yet)! A scale model would have the Milky Way and Andromeda each the size of grapefruits (10 cm diameter) at a distance of 2 meters from each other. There are about 300 000 000 000 (three hundred billion) galaxies in the visible universe, give or take a few. Most of the universe is not as densely packed as the group of galaxies that Andromeda and the Milky Way belong to, but is quite empty.

The answer has to be estimated; for many reasons no one can ever know the exact numbers, whatever that might mean in this context. Estimates of the number of galaxies in the u…niverse range from about 170 billion to one trillion. One trillion is one thousand millions. Estimates of the number of stars range from around 70 sextillion to 300 sextillion. Seventy sextillion is 7 followed by 22 zeros. 300 sextillion is 3 followed by 23 zeros. Some estimate as high as 10 to the power 24, which is one followed by 24 zeros. You might think that 22, 23 and 24 are small numbers here, until you begin to consider that every single one of them represents a power of ten. The number is far beyond anything that any human mind can grasp on anything close to a practical level.